Steps on the Road

Card from Sefirot: The Spheres of Heaven Tarot by Eliot Baum, Georg Hobmeier, Viv Tanner, and James Patton of Causa Creations

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Monday, October 30, 2023, I made my first attempt to draw a single card to encourage a focus or theme of concentration for the day. In retrospect, it wasn’t specifically helpful, maybe since I’m still familiarizing myself with the concepts & energies of these cards, but I also find that the pip cards (the Minor Arcana’s numbered suits, excluding Court cards & Major) are especially challenging in single draws. Since this deck treats each suit (Ace to Ten) as its own self-contained journey of sorts, with each number representing a stage or event of that journey, I’m finding that they naturally work better in combination with other cards to take full advantage or their relationality.

All the same, I tried with the Three of Pentacles, and whether or not it was helpful for that particular day, it at least helped me better acquaint myself with another card.

This pip can represent a first stage of learning and decisively acting in the material world, especially an attempt to manipulate the world somehow for a practical goal. It holds the potential for enormous progress, but not without dangers: caution is encouraged to avoid losing control of whatever power or expectations are found. Representative of all that is right and wrong with the first active steps down the road of material action, I take this card to represent the triplicity of trying, doing, or not doing (alternatively: the attempt, and the potential of its success or failure).

Most of the pentacles suit gives me big “As above, so below” vibes, and it’s no different here with the light and dark halves plotting the pentacles on a vertical axis, even conjuring a yin-yang-esque, reflective quality. The linearity is also important, given the metaphor of “the road of material action” suggested in the deck’s guidebook.

Again, I think the Three of Pentacles is better served in relation to others in a fuller spread, but I’ve at least gained more insight into the card, and lost nothing. One step on the road to progress, after all!